


Once Bitten

by Lady_Therion



Series: Once Bitten [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Anyelle, Blood, Drug Use, F/M, Language, Nostelle, Toxic Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 12:29:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5127647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Therion/pseuds/Lady_Therion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nosty never belonged to anyone, but a fateful encounter with Belle changes everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Bitten

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SkinnyCanuck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkinnyCanuck/gifts).



> This was written as a gift for SkinnyCanuck (who is quite awesome sauce) for Rumbelle Revelry 2015 :)

* * *

 

_The woman is perfected._

_Her dead_

_Body wears the smile of accomplishment._  

-Sylvia Plath, “Edge”

*******

The night’s fucking _baltic_ by the time Nosty leaves his tarp den in Blackfriars. The biting wind sets his teeth on edge, and there’s nowt he can do but shove his reddened hands into his leather jacket. Beneath his feet, the roads were frozen all to shite, making them blacker and more menacing under the glare of the streetlights.

 _Good thing I’m in a huntin’ mood_ , he thinks with a feral grin. _A mangy wolf on the prowl. More’s the pity for my prey._

This time, the prey in question was a doss cunt by the name of “Jack the White.” A bit of posturing and the promise of gear was all Nosty needed for some jakey to sight the thieving bastart on Fleet Street. Now he makes his way through crowds of charmless tourists on holiday, snow dusting his shoulders like layers of discarded ash.

When he fingers the switchblade his pocket, he imagines carving it into Jackie’s pasty skin. He’ll dig deep enough to leave a scar: a lovely, little reminder of what happens to scunners that steal from the likes of Nosty… 

He weaves through alley after alley, the scenery getting dodgier and dodgier as he goes on. No signs of life, unless one counts the bleak firelight of burning trashcans or the lines of vacant-eyed mingers huddled against graffitied walls. Finally, he happens upon the pished sod what tipped him off of Jack’s whereabouts. He was baws deep in the bottle until Nosty approached, and it was a good five or ten before the blootered wanker sets his coupon on the prize: a plastic baggie filled with pure, class-A paradise. 

“You’re man’s there,” he slurs, pointing to the dumpsters.

“Half now, half later,” Nosty sneers as he tosses the baggie at the sorry punter’s feet. “And if you’re shitein me…” He pulls out his switchblade quick as you like, sticking its serrated edge under the jakey’s wet chin. “I’ll collect _your fuckin’ scalp_. Trust us. It’ll be _your_ name I’ll add to Jack the White’s epitaph, ken?” He slaps the fucker hard enough to make him stagger before he stumbles off.

Nosty spits after the pitiful gutter rat, the blood hammering in his ears after the warm-up. He stalks over, not wanting to waste any more time, his steel-toed boots drumming up a death knell on the filthy pavement.

_There he was._

The rid-heided fucker. Nosty would recognize the two-faced ginger cunt anywhere. He must have been gagging for a death wish if he hadn’t the sense to leave London all together. He wasnae alone neither. No, some posh lassie had beaten him to the prize. And from the sounds of it, she was giving him the works. The hilt of the switchblade feels strong and true in Nosty’s hand.

 _Ah well. Looks like it’s two for the price of one_ —and Nosty was never one to pass up a bargain. But before he could take another step, he is frozen in his tracks. His whole body suddenly weighing him down, rooting him to the spot.

It all happens very fast.

There is a loud animal cry that Nosty will never forget. A sound that could make the dead piss themselves in their graves. Not one second later, auld Jack falls like a puppet cut from its strings. His head hangs at a strange angle and there is a gaping hole at the side of his neck. His eyes are pointed skyward.

Dead as a fucking doornail. 

It’s Posh Lassie that closes them. She is more wee than Nosty realises. She would barely brush his chin were standing next to one another. Then she turns to him and all Nosty can think of is death.

There is blood dripping from the corner of her mouth. She wipes at it with a hanky she pulls from the pocket of her pea coat. Like it’s fucking teatime and she’s just had her fill of the tarte. Her skin is as pale as the pure driven snow, making her eyes look like blue marble stones.

She is a beautiful nightmare.

_Jesus fucking Christ._

Nosty feels his arm move of its own accord, his hand losing his grip on the switchblade. It falls from his hand. She looks at it, and then at him.

“Were you going to kill that man?” she asks.

“Aye,” Nosty answers in a strangled whisper. Even his _voice_ felt like it was held in a vice grip. “So what if I was? I ain’t the one who had him for fucking dinner.” 

She peered up at him in the darkness, as though she could see into his filthy soul.

“He asked for death,” she says. “He wanted to end things quietly. He wanted it for a very long time.”

“Aye, so it were a mercy killing then?” he snarls. ““Git tae _fuck._ ”

Then slowly, incomprehensibly, she smiles. It terrifies and thrills him all at once.

“You’re very different,” she says. “If you were anyone else, I’d…”

The clamor of sirens erupts in the distance.

“You should go,” she tells him. Then she waves her hand and he collapses. Free from her thrall, he swallows a lungful of air. By the time he scrambles to his feet, Posh Lassie has vanished into the fucking mists.

Nosty is alone.

*******

Nosty doesn’t find the piece of paper in his jacket until a few days later. How long it had been there, Nosty didn’t know. But he unrolls it nonetheless.

It has a Kensington address written in dainty script and a little note that says “If you’re curious…”

_Is he?_

At first, Nosty doesn’t know what to think. He’d seem some real shite while living rough, but nothing even came close to a fucking _nosferatu_. Though he wants to purge the night from his memory, he cannot seem to shake the vision of dark curls, blue eyes and bloodstained lips. He dreams of her more often than not, jerking himself awake to a cold sweat and a dampened kilt.

In the end, he goes to Kensington anyway, wondering all the while if this was how auld Jack had felt the night he sought his own death.

*******

To his surprise, the address leads to a bookshop. It stood at the corner of Kingsbury and Williams, across the street from a French café. There was a sign above the door that read, “Open after midnight. By appointment only.”

Nosty wonders if was only radges like him that would show up at her doorstep past midnight. He didn’t even have to knock. The door was already open. A little bell rings above him as he makes his way inside.

Everything is warm and cozy-like. A page from _Homes and Gardens_ come to life. All chaise lounges, rosewood shelves and antique rugs. He passes by a counter with a lever-operated cash register, and stands in the middle of a common area where a fireplace cheerily burns its kindling. 

“I wondered if you would come.”  

She appears from a staircase off to the right that looks like it might lead to a flat. Nosty doesn’t like that he couldn’t hear her coming. He doesn’t like how she can easily waylay him from behind and snap his neck in two like she did auld Jack.

“You left me a bloody note. What the hell did you expect?”

She shrugs. “I expected that I would never see you again.”

Nosty doesn’t know what to say to that.

“Would you like some tea?”

She invites him to sit with her in the common area. There is a silver tea tray on the low table that is filled with sweets. Was all that for _them_? He didn’t imagine that vampires ate anything besides people.

“I like the taste,” she explains, sensing his question before he could say it aloud. “It reminds me of who I was before.” She doesn’t look at him as she says this, but pats the seat next to her on the sofa. “You can sit if you like.”

Nosty prefers to stand. He has never felt more like a fish out of water. It fucking kills him that he has shown up here, in her elegant little shop, like the quintessential urchin of the unwashed masses.

“We haven’t been properly introduced,” she says, crossing those supple legs of hers. Though London is a veritable arctic wasteland, she seems to prefer her summer skirts. Not that Nosty was complaining. “My name is Belle French.”

Nosty doesn’t want to say anything. Names have power.

“Your name is Nosty,” says Belle, eyes glittering. “Jack told me about you.”

He bristles. “Did he now? What else did he tell you?”

“Not much,” says Belle. “He was very troubled when he came to me. They all are. Desperate souls just looking for release.”

Nosty knows that all too well. To prey on the weak, after all, is how he survives. 

In that sense, they’re not so different from one another.

“Is that what you do?” he asks her. “Take in every stray that comes through your door and give ‘em a little taste of oblivion?”

He sees her eyes darken before she turns her gaze to the fire. Though it still blazes, there doesn’t seem to be any warmth in the room. “They don’t come to me for oblivion,” she tells him, “They come to me for something else.”

“Aye? And what’s that?”

She is on him faster than he can blink. Her face poised at the juncture of his neck. His hands twitch on instinct for want of a weapon, and for a moment he thinks of the switchblade he keeps in his jacket.

“Tell me why _you_ came here,” she whispers, her breath—or something like it—caressing his skin like a dark promise.

He can feel his face burn. It has been a long time since Nosty has felt shame. “I dunno. I dunno why. I can’t…” 

“Shhh.” She brushes his face with the tips of her fingers, her touch so fucking tender that it makes him want to weep and wail as he hadn’t done so since he was a bairn. It is worse than being naked, being this vulnerable and at her mercy. His weakness repulses and arouses him all at once. “I can show you true bliss. But only if you let me. All you have to do is ask. I won’t force you…”

He closes his eyes and he trembles. Her nearness feels like absolution. Her nearness feels like _annihilation._

“I want you too,” he says finally.

He does.

He braces himself for it. The bloody undoing. The carnality of the kill. But instead, all he feels is her deft little hands reaching beneath his jacket, gently removing it from his shoulders so that it falls into a manky heap on the floor. She has to tiptoe to reach his neck and, inexplicably, she presses the sweetest of kisses there.

Is it any wonder that Jack the White died at her hands?

She nuzzles into him, then uses her tongue. Little licks that raise the gooseflesh and makes him smile without knowing it. A genuine smile without any of the savagery. Then he feels it. The swift bite. Like a hard pinch.

He gasps in surprise, rather than in pain. 

“Ah. _Fuck_.”

Then she begins to suck with those wine-colored lips and all he feels is a rush of pure rapture. It is better than any drug he has ever plunged into his system. There is no sense of sterile numbness, of being callously anesthetized to the world. Instead, he feels like he is folding _into_ the world that had so long rejected him. It’s like the first breath of air after nearly drowning.

He has spent his whole life fighting against a heartless tide of indifference.

He is complete and at peace.

*******

Nosty knows addiction. He fucking banks on it. Still, he continues his midnight jaunts to Belle’s bookshop. He does so for three months, until the bleak winter season thaws into a grey and dismal spring.

Addiction eats away. It rots. It ravages. But when Belle sets her perfect little teeth on him, he feels cleansed and clarified. He craves this as he’s craved nothing else. More to than that, he wants it all for himself.

He aches to be possessed.

It’s his greed that gets the better of him one evening as he stares at his reflection in the mirror of some rank lavvie outside a seedy pub. There’s a dark bruising around the puncture wounds in his neck. He pokes and prods them. He wants to see them _darken._ He wants to see them become _permanent_. He wants them to become as much as a part of him as the little swallow tat that Belle favored so.

“It reminds me of freedom,” she told him once, holding him in her lap on that posh sofa of hers. He’s always conscious of dirtying her things, so he takes his boots off at the door now whenever he visits. “It’s beautiful. Like you.”

He remembers closing his eyes as she rakes those deft little fingers through his ratty hair.

“You’re fucking daft if you think a bam like me could be anything but ugly,” he tells her. But her words soothe him like a balm, because the way she said them made him feel like he was worth more than some radge dealer.

God, it felt so good to be _needed_.

But accompanying his state of respite was a gnawing pang of jealousy. How many blokes—or birds for that matter—had Belle taken into her arms? How many more will she have after she’s had her fill of him? The inevitability of being cast aside tears him up inside.

The rage poisons him.

There is a pounding at the door. “Oi! You havin’ yourself a good wank in there or what?”

Nosty grits his teeth. The rage bubbles over.

 _And someone will have to take a beating tonight._  

*******

Belle doesn’t comment on his bloodied knuckles when he comes to her later. Instead, she croons and licks them clean, kissing each one of his fingers as she goes along. She’s led him into her flat upstairs, which is just as cozy as the shop. There is a queen-sized bed that takes up most of the room, and it takes some gentle coaxing on her part to get him to lie on it.

Nosty hasn’t lied on a bed in ages.

“This is where I sleep during the day,” she tells him after she’s done with her grooming. There are heavy curtains placed on every window. For some wordless reason, they make him feel safe. She has raised herself on her elbow, so she has to lean down to kiss his furrowed brow. “You’re the first one I’ve brought up here you know. The only one.”

Nosty’s cock stirs at the words “the only one.” It twitches beneath his kilt and he begins to shift restlessly.  

It isn’t the first time that Nosty’s arousal has caused him embarrassment. There were many nights where he couldn’t reign in his own bait and tackle, and it was only a matter of time before Belle took notice. 

“You’re just excited sweetheart,” she said the first time, and he had moaned aloud at the term of endearment, thinking he would come just from her affection alone. Her kindness was like a fucking disease, he thought. It overwhelmed his senses and left him _delirious._

Noticing his discomfort, Belle’s hand makes a slow descent to his waist. She knows what he wants. She’s given it to him before—and God, he is ready to _beg_ for it. 

“Belle… _Belle_ …”

She gives him fluttering little kisses along his cheeks, his forehead, his chin, his lips. Each one as soft as a bird’s wing. He opens his eyes to see her gazing down at him, trying to make sense of his plea.

“What’s wrong love?”

He doesn’t know how to tell her. He doesn’t know how to tell her that he wants this to be theirs and theirs alone.

“I want…I want…”

He _cannot_ say the words. They sit in his throat like a brick of pure lead.

Belle sits on her knees and removes her demure little nightie so that only her sheer bra and panties are left. He can see the rosy tips of her breasts and the glistening wetness of her core through the delicate fabric. It is the first time he has seen so much of her soft, porcelain flesh—it is smooth and cool, easing him through his feverish urges.   

She undoes his kilt, unwrapping him before her eyes. His cock springs free, moisture beading at the tip. He is red and throbbing and needy.

“ _Look_ at you sweetheart,” she whispers, fingers circling his head. “So magnificent.”

Belle reaches for him, taking the hard length of him in her grasp, pumping slowly until his back arches off the bed.

“That hard enough love?” she asks, while wetting her lips.

“Harder… _more_ …please…”

He bucks and begs through it.  

It was too much. It was not enough.

At one point, Belle pauses her fucking delicious ministrations to take aside her panties. He pants and writhes at the sight of her gorgeous pink folds. It’s as though his own blood is blistering inside him.

He has never been inside her before.

“Do you want it?” she asks him.

He is frantic, flaming and flushed. “Aye, I fucking want it. I fucking want _you_.”

He wants to be her “only one” always.

Belle’s eyes soften and glitter at their unspoken epiphany. “Oh _darling_. I want you too. I’ll never stop wanting you.” Then she leans over him and takes him into her mouth—wetting his cock with messy and eager kisses until he is certain he would die from the ecstasy. Then to his complete and utter shock, she sinks down on him. That sweet cunt of hers taking him all the way.

“Fuck…aw fuck…yes, yes…”

He thrashes underneath her, but she holds him steady—pinning him down with both arms as she rides him hard. “Only _you_ , Nosty,” she moans. “Only you.”

And just as Nosty is about climb that radiant peak, she sinks her teeth into him too. Drawing his blood and filling him with ungodly euphoria. It had to be a fucking _sin_ to feel this fucking good.

She hums against his neck. “Oh God! Nosty! You taste so… _mmm_.”

He comes in an instant, his thighs growing sticky from his own fluids and hers. Her words are lost in a breathless cry as she reaches her own exquisite climax. She groans once before falling onto his chest, breathing harshly.

Nosty is lost, adrift, with Belle as his only anchor to the real world.

But before he slips into the dark, he hears her say the words, “You’re mine and mine alone, Nosty. Always.”

It is all he has ever longed for in life. 


End file.
